How old the world is! I walk between two eternities.... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that ...valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a house is tottering to its fall, The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part,... One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads, And its own weight soon brings it toppling down.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Most people with whom I talk, men and women even of some originality and genius, have their scheme of the universe all cut and dri...ed,--very dry, I assure you, to hear, dry enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post, methinks,--which they set up between you and them in the shortest intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame with all its boards blown off. They do not walk without their bed. Some, to me, seemingly very unimportant and unsubstantial things and relations are for them everlastingly settled,--as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the like. These are like the everlasting hills to them. But in all my wanderings I never came across the least vestige of authority for these things. They have not left so distinct a trace as the delicate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my grate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »